


I've always wondered, do witchers ever retire?

by werewolve



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character death because they all die in the end, Domestic Fluff, Gen, Memoirs, Multi, Non-Canonical Character Death, One Shot, Retirement, Short One Shot, but not in an angsty way, i don't really know how to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 08:47:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30019197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/werewolve/pseuds/werewolve
Summary: 'All good things must come to an eventual end. . .'These are the first words printed in that well-known book, that one anybody still living on the Continent or even beyond its borders has read. They are true to all that exists, but they refer specifically to that of the White Wolf, and the life he had once led.Many may have expected its end to be a brutal one, but the stories tell a far different account. A personal one never meant at the time for the eyes of the public.Until now, of course.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	I've always wondered, do witchers ever retire?

The feeling started in the middle of a battle with a kikimora. It was a bubbling warm feeling in the pit of Geralt’s stomach, one that seemed to slow time around him and grind his movements to a halt. He’d gained a new scar that day, and it had been the only thing that had drawn him back into the fight. Had the monster not struck him so gracelessly, with more precision perhaps, he believed his injury would have been fatal- and worse, he believed he would have accepted such. 

Cirilla had hounded him on his carelessness the moment he had returned with the creatures head in his hand- the one hand he was able to use as the other hung limply at his side. His arm had been in a sling for five days. The healing process was slower than it should have been. 

In the meantime, Geralt trained in the yard. Worked up his strength in his useful arm and ran when he could. He wasn’t sure when he’d taken to purposeful exercise that wasn’t duelling beasts in swamps, but he wasn’t exactly put off by the newfound habit either. In fact, Geralt had begun to gain a whole host of new hobbies over the few months after the injury. He took up archery when he regained his movement, as a sport rather than a hunt. He swam occasionally, and when he wasn’t swimming he sprawled out beside lakes and watched the sunset or fished. 

More and more frequently, he’d allow himself the small pleasure of daydreaming. Collecting his thoughts and growing number of feelings into moments of zoned out consciousness about the world around him. 

Of course, the hunt was never-ending. There were always monsters, always new inns and villages. Yet, Geralt found himself with more free time than was usual for him. He’d wondered if perhaps things had always passed by this slowly, but that he’d been moving too fast himself to notice. Or whether, similarly, he’d never cared to spare a thought to the idle time he spent in taverns in the middle of dull days. 

Jaskier teased him frequently. Yennefer spoke of worries for him losing his last remaining marble. 

Geralt laughed. 

He laughed so much more often. He laughed at Yennefer and Cirilla’s long talks about the pains of men and the triumphs of their adventures. He laughed at Jaskier’s jokes. He laughed at games, and long nights, and the tickle of fingers against his skin. He laughed all hearty and warm and like he might actually have begun to love that cold dark thing of a world that surrounded him.

In his desperate clinging to his job, his work, his life’s purpose, he’d let slip his happiness. And as that beast of a feeling crept in again, Geralt grew more human. 

It was as though the mutations that made him who he was were uncoiling. As though the broken parts of him had grown new roots and began to bud again. Geralt talked more, slept longer, breathed deeper. He leaned into yearning and the sweet taste of adoration for the smaller things. He maintained that he had no use for the useless of the world; that which was beautiful and that’s only purpose was beauty, and yet more than once those who he kept close had found different stories of him stopping to smell the flowers, or to admire the coastline, or to warm his hands beside the fire. 

When he held Yennefer he held her longer. When he kissed Jaskier he kissed him gentler. When he taught Ciri he did so with a smile and a patience his teachers had lacked and he had never inherited. 

People began referring to Geralt by his name, rather than his title. They bought him drinks and spoiled him with tales of their own adventures, hunts and encounters. They told him of jobs they themselves had taken up as though it were a purposeful ploy to give the old witcher a break. When Jaskier played for taverns they celebrated him, and Geralt had begun to openly do the same. The old songs Jaskier sung became like fables to read at night and the new ones were like prayers to the sun and to love and to all that Geralt found splendid. Patrons found them strange, and yet strangely comforting. The White Wolf became less a lone howling thing and more a wise leader of a pack. Where he could, he helped, and in between, he listened. 

Jaskier was the first to pose the idea that he may finally have reached that retirement he’d once so coldly denied. Geralt was quick to deny the idea all over again. Being a witcher was far more than a job, it was a life, an eternity. The only escape was death, and even then you died to return once more a witcher. 

But what of life? Could it not be harder to deny that life, the act of living, was a rejection of this ideal? 

Is that not what Geralt had been doing? Living? At last a peaceful and happy teacher with companions he no longer shunned the company of and a fascination for what the next day could bring. He’d found life in his lifeless heart and made the dreary and dreadful into the transcendent and divine.

Whilst he could never retire; both for his biology and his need for something to do, he could get as close to the human ideal of retirement that he might allow himself to. And for a while he did. 

Yennefer, Ciri and him travelled to far off reaches and studied new fighting styles and magics. They embraced all that was dark and powerful and gathered together new resources to keep lit the fires under their feet. When they returned Ciri set about using what she had learned and Yennefer set about lounging in her contentment for her continuing search for everything she wanted back, her continued rumble of rebellion against the world that had once wronged her. Geralt served only in the background to her desires and dreams, by his own choice. He need not interfere when Yennefer did so well on her own. The two great women of his life a brilliant pair of predators poised so ever readily over their prey. 

As for Jaskier and him, they spent two months living at the coast. Two months in a quiet place they had to themselves amongst the nature and the tide and the lingering unspoken knowledge of the bliss of each other’s company. After that they returned to travelling, the now-famous bard continuing his writing and Geralt continuing to sharpen his blade. Roach got on well for an old mare, she fought to keep going even when Geralt decided it was perhaps time to stop, and it took years for her to give in to her own final breath. The night she lay down, Geralt lay with her, humming songs against her neck and making sure the hay was comfortable. The morning she left, he brushed out the knots for her hair and gave her one last pat. 

He never got another horse. He travelled then on by foot. And when he died, he was laid to rest with her. Her and those other three companions of his. 

That’s what the biography said. A dusty leather-bound book found in a chest washed to shore years later. The author had written everything he knew, and fabricated small things he didn’t- as he always had. The pages were folded, well-read, and over the years more copies began to surface. 

Then they were printed, officially by machine. And the tales passed on and on. 

Generation to generation they spoke of them, those five. The Lioness, the Sorceress, the Mare, the Bard, and the Witcher. 

And Julian had spared no detail in the end, just as his thrice great grandfather had spared none in the beginning.


End file.
